Florence

We arrive in Florence and I am dying of starvation. So we stop at this place and in the window it just is cheese, bread, olives, and pickled things. So we don't really know what to get ('cause we don't know what it all is) so she asks, "Do you want me to just make something up for you?" So she did. And this is what we got . . .

Meat, cheese, bread, olives, sundried tomatoes, pickled onions, artichoke hearts and something else we weren't really sure what it was. It was good, but really oily. It was fun to have a different kind of meal.

This is a huge market and everything was leather. It was really expensive so we didn't get anything, but it was fun to walk around.

Stopping in a random pretty church to figure out where we are.

It was a long day. I was so exhausted from Rome and so sick of eating Italian food. All there was in Italy was meat and cheese sandwhich, pizza, or pasta. Now those are all very good things. But for lunch and dinner everyday!!!! I got sick of it fast. I was tired and grumpy (it was also day 3 on the underwear) and so we went to the hostel to retire for the evening much earlier than planned. And it was such a good idea. We saw peanut butter at the market and it was expenseive but we got it along with jam and bread and I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich. Our hostel has a great view at the dining area so we sat up there and I'm making my sandwhich and suddenly some american reggae/rap song comes on and suddenly I felt connected with America/home again. It was so good. In my mind it seemed ridiculous to be eating such a plain thing in Florence but it felt SO GOOD. I went from feeling really lousy to really good.

We also washed our clothes for the first time by hand. It was really fun (for the first bit), I'd never done that before. Ah, it felt so good to be in clean clothes the next day.

The next day we went to town (our hostel was a bit out of town) and bought tickets for museums and had lunch in this fun spot crowded with people and live music everywhere! It was neat. These 2 people were playing violin/ viola/ whatever and it sounded great.

Holy cow do you see this??? This is what the gelato looked like in every shop (and the shops were EVERYWHERE! atleast one on every single block.) It was always heaped and looking so beautiful. And it ALWAYS tasted good! It melts so fast though it never lasts very long! Every flavor was amazing. Even cantaloup. It was so good.

This is where they would drop people if they couldn't pay there debts. Or something like that. Can you believe that! Barbaric! There's an X where Greg is standing (with his pockets open and empty). Greg wanted to rub the pigs nose. I think you give him money, rub his nose and then you have luck? So many things to remember, I've forgotten a lot.

While we were there we heard this, "cling, cling, cling" and out of nowhere these women come clinking along sort of marching beautifully together and stop at the pig! People are coming out of everywhere to see what was happening and they were giving a free performance! So we saw it! It was really cool. I don't remember what kind of dance it was. It was LONG though. There were guys in it too.

Walking along the beautiful river.

Cobblestone. Who knew there were so many kinds? In Rome there were HUGE stones bigger than my head with HUGE gaps between them. It was kinda scary to walk on. After walking on cobblestone all day, the moment your foot touches pavement you feel like you're walking on a mat. I am not kidding. I now hate cobblestone.

This building was AMAZING!!! It is GIANT. This is only showing a little bit because we couldn't fit it in. If you look close you can see how tiny the people right next to it are. This is maybe 1/4 or 1/3 or it. I couldn't get over how WILD it looked. Everytime I looked at it I thought, "candycane. It looks like it is CANDY CANE!!!" Because it was all red, green and white marble. Insanely detailed. It was just wild everytime we looked at it. It was fun because when we left Rome I thought, "Wow, the rest of the trip is going to be so boring now. What could top Rome?" And Florence was just really cool. It looked really different. A bit mid evil.

This is in a science museum. It was actually pretty cool. It had old inventions from Galileo from 500 years ago (also his finger- yikes!). It had old telescopes (like the first ones invented). It was pretty cool.

The David. This is not the real David, you couldn't take pictures of him. The David is all over this city. He was a HUGE thing for Florence. A real sense of pride and awakening. Michelangelo made him from just a scrap of huge marble that was just lying around. David is magnificent. The longer I looked at him the bigger he got. I love that nobody made or asked Michelangelo to make it, HE made it. And it's one of his greatest works. To think- what if everything he made was because that's what HE wanted to do- what would there have been? Michelangelo must have been so incredible to make something so inspiring- just straight from his heart. I love it.